Caesura

CCLXXXI

Seelowe (Operation Sealion): The German invasion of England, planned for the Summer of 1940

And so, with France defeated, the Low Countries overrun, most of Scandinavia supine, and eastern Europe under German domination, what happened next was --- nothing.

Had Hitler stormed across the English Channel at the end of June 1940 with thunder and steel there is little doubt that the reeling British, stunned by the rapidity of the German advance, would likely have collapsed completely. They had never seen anything like Hitler’s blitzkrieg before. 

But neither had Hitler. 

Dunkirk had been a miracle. British commanders had estimated that at best they were going to rescue 35,000 of the 350,000 men trapped in the small French port. Instead, they had brought 338,226 men out of harm’s way.

The evacuation of Dunkirk

The weather had helped. The bright Spring weather that had seemingly blessed German arms in May had degenerated into an unseasonably cool, wet and misty mess in late June, limiting the Luftwaffe’s ground attack options against the men huddled on the beach or the flotilla sent to rescue them.

Still, things were dire. The survivors of Dunkirk returned to a weaponless England. Almost all of Great Britain’s land-based war machinery was either now in Nazi hands or sat smashed and burning throughout the French countryside. The Royal Air Force could muster only 330 Supermarine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes against the state-of-the-art air fleet of BF-109 Messerschmitt fighters being used by the Luftwaffe. In the entirety of the United Kingdom were only 80 heavy tanks of World War I vintage. There were another 180 light tanks equipped with small bore muzzles and mounted machine guns. There was a fleet of civilian trucks that could be pressed into service for transport, but without armor they would be targets of opportunity for advanced German weaponry.

A playful photograph of two Home Guards in Shropshire. Despite the seeming jocularity of these men they were prepared to use those weapons in earnest against any Nazi. Few of the Home Guard saw much action. Occasionally there was the hair-raising apprehension of a downed German flier or an enemy agent

Most Home Guardsmen didn’t have uniforms --- or rifles. They often drilled with improvised weapons. Here, lengths of wood stand in for hand grenades. Mop handles often stood in for rifles. The legend of women being prepared to resist the invader with rolling pins is more apocryphal than real, but only just

The British improvised during the lean months of the Spring and Summer of 1940. These “armored cars” were converted trucks mounted with small bore machine guns

In May 1940,  the British War Minister, Anthony Eden, asked for men between 41 and 55 to join the Home Guard, formally called the Local Defense Volunteers, also known as “The People’s Army” and “Dad’s Army”. The requirement was that a man be able to march in rank unassisted and fire a shotgun. By June, the LDV had 1.5 million members as young as 15 and as old as 65. Tasks were found for the more infirm, especially wounded Great War veterans. Nobody who wanted to serve King and Country was turned away

Home Guard reenactments are as popular in the U.K. as Civil War reenactments are in the U.S.

Aside from the 330,000 soldiers saved from Dunkirk (many of whom were truly unfit for duty as they came ashore) there were 470,000 members of the Home Guard  to hold the line, mostly older World War I veterans, young boys in their mid-teens, or young men passed over for service for a variety of reasons. Only 100,000 rifles existed to equip this citizen army.  Otherwise, they were equipped with sidearms and in some cases quarterstaves. 

Classes of vessels in the Royal Navy during World War II

In only one area did Britain predominate: The Royal Navy.  In 1939, the Royal Navy (worldwide) had 431 surface ships on active duty and 166 under construction.  Great Britain had 60 active submarines and 9 on the ways. The total manpower of the Royal Navy was 188,684. In stark contrast, the Kriegsmarine had 57 active surface vessels and 48 under construction. Of those 48, only 27 would be completed. Germany did have 57 active submarines in 1939; they were almost all state-of-the-art, and more were being built. The U-boat was to become Germany’s preeminent offensive weapon of the seas.*

Classes of ships in the Kriegsmarine during World War II

So while a Nazi invasion of Great Britain did not promise to be a cakewalk, the odds were that if German troops could get a foothold in England there would be little chance of throwing them back into the English Channel. Yet Hitler delayed, and the delay would prove to be his undoing. 

One basic reason for the delay in launching a blitzkrieg against England was that Germany was a victim of its own successes. General Alfred Jodl had estimated that “Case Yellow” in western Europe would take six months from inception to close, and he considered a partial occupation of northern France and control of the Channel ports to be the benchmark of success. No one expected France to collapse so completely in such a brief period of time. The Germans were hard put to it just to establish functional control of their new territories in the west. They drew upon their limited pool of administrators in the east, which slowed the implementation of German policies in the General-Gouvernment and elsewhere to a crawl. The Jews, in particular, were granted a brief and partial reprieve from destruction in 1940. 

Another basic reason for the delay in German invasion plans was the failure of the Kriegsmarine to implement even a contingency plan for crossing the Channel. The German High Command estimated that it would take 250,000 troops to enter lower England. They had no real idea how to do so. Nobody had done so in 874 years. The narrow English Channel (just 21 miles from coast-to-coast at Dover) has quick and tricky tides, and can become surprisingly difficult in inclement weather. While it would seem easy enough to clog the Channel with transport ships, those ships wouldn’t simply be able to tie up to the quay to unload. A plan was bruited about to transport German men and materiel on a fleet of towed barges, but just how these barges could be defended from air and sea attack was unclear.

This gaming graphic of a German invasion of Great Britain is historically inaccurate. Landing craft like the one shown did not exist in 1940. They were not invented until 1943, and were first used by the United States Marine Corps in its amphibious assault on Tarawa Atoll in the Pacific. The Germans can be forgiven for not knowing how to invade England; nobody had done it since William The Conqueror in 1066

And, as for a third reason for a delayed invasion, Hitler simply didn’t want to invade England. Although he felt that democracy was a weak form of government he did admire the British for their verve in establishing a worldwide empire. He also was quite cognizant of the fact that the English were a Germanic people at root.** Until 1917, the British Royal House had been named Saxe-Coburg und Gotha and had been changed to “Windsor” only because of the German – British estrangement of World War I.  Hitler would have much preferred a negotiated settlement with the British over continuing the war on the Western Front. He imagined that Germany could arrange for the return of Edward VIII *** (the abdicated king, now Duke of Windsor) to the throne, and then have pressed for the appointment of Sir Oswald Moseley, head of the British Union of Fascists, as Prime Minister. Whether any of this was realistic is open to question. 

Still, Hitler did nothing. From the day the French surrendered at Compiegne on June 22^nd until July 19^th German forces stayed emplaced. On the evening of the latter day, Hitler made a speech in the Reichstag, the substance of which declared,

Hitler, making his “Last Appeal To Reason” speech in July 1940

In this hour I feel it to be my duty before my own conscience to appeal once more to reason and common sense in Great Britain as much as elsewhere. I consider myself in a position to make this appeal, since I am not the vanquished, begging favors, but the victor speaking in the name of reason. I can see no reason why this war must go on. I am grieved to think of the sacrifices it will claim . . . I should like to avert them . . . Possibly Mr. Churchill again will brush aside this statement of mine by saying that it is merely born of fear and of doubt in our final victory. In that case I shall have relieved my conscience in regard to the things to come.


 









 

 

 

 

 

*The Kriegsmarine was an honored service in Germany, important enough that Admiral Karl Doenitz assumed the title of Fuhrer after Hitler’s death. Despite Germany’s relative paucity of ships, at peak strength the Kriegsmarine numbered over 404,000 men of all ranks. During the warlong Battle of The Atlantic German U-boats sank 3,500 Allied merchant ships and 175 warships. However, Germany’s losses were also staggering. Of 1,156 U-boats that put to sea 783 U-boats were sunk with the loss of 30,000 lives, a 75% loss rate. Germany also lost 47 surface warships

**Like most European peoples the English are an admixture of old tribes: Various Celts, invading Romans, Angles, Saxons and Jutes from northern Germany, Danish Vikings, and the Norman-French, to name the major ones. The current British Royal House of Windsor marks its patrilineal descent from the German House of Wettin and its matrilineal descent from the German House of Hanover. Victoria and Albert, those most British of British monarchs, were both born in Germany and spoke German as children

*** See LXV “In the Shadow of the Swastika” , March 7, 2016